Eun K. Strawser | You Were Never Meant to Lead Alone: Shared Power, and Discipleship-First Leadership

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined today by NK Strasser. She's the author of a new book called You Were Never Meant to Lead Alone. And she's also the co-vocational lead pastor of Makia Luo. I think I, did I say that? I got it right. Yes. That so seldom happens. This is actually the second time Nk's been on the podcast, and so I'm excited to have her back. The last time we were talking about her other book on discipleship, and this one's on leadership, but I see so many commonalities between the two. And so I'm really excited to have you back to talk through the book. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming and being on the podcast today. I am super stoked. Thanks for having me, James. Yeah, absolutely. So I, I don't want to just dive into the heavy stuff. I thought maybe we'd kind of work up to some of the more interesting things, but you root a lot of your book in Ephesians, which I really loved. I thought that was really helpful and actually a very effective treatment of Ephesians and application to leadership. So maybe we could just start out by talking a little bit about that as well as, and I think we'll circle back around to sort of why you ended up writing the book, but what drew you in to Ephesians in the first place? Why did you gravitate there when you're talking about leadership? Yeah, if it's going to be a spoiler alert, the book is on leadership and my antidote to any sort of domineering leadership that I'm sure every single one of us are in a Christian context, leadership context, whatever, a combination of those two contexts that we know that domineering leadership is an epidemic, perhaps a pandemic in the Christian world today. And it probably has been for a long, long time. So, you know, spoiler alert, the antidote to it is actually sharing leadership, which really, really does have to do with sharing power. So if you're going to be talking about that and thinking about what kinds of things the Scripture provide also as a practical solution to it, then you can't skip over Ephesians 4. I know that Ephesians 4, not the entirety of the chapter, but portions of it, people either skip over or only want to highlight. And so I really wanted to do a broader scriptural kind of a surveillance over what did the Apostle Paul actually mean when he was writing about polycentric leadership or shared leadership amongst the leadership set or caricatures of leaders that he offers in Ephesians 4. But if you kind of take that out of context, then you'll also miss the point. So that was why I wanted to center it a little bit more on landing the plane on Ephesians 4. Well, I will say one of the reasons I thought it was interesting that you went there is because of Ephesians 5. You know, Ephesians 5 and 6, you know, you have the mutual submission kind of admonition. You have then the conversation around husbands and wives, parents and children, slaves and masters. And it just felt to me, having not really read Ephesians 4 this way, the way you take it, it felt like there was so much more continuity thematically at the very least between these two chapters as you read them together, that there is a mutual submission that needs to happen, that, as you say, the domineering aspect is supposed to be sort of not commensurate with what it looks like to do leadership in a Christian community, and that these different groups of people who have been gifted differently by God are really working together to move forward. Is that a fair assessment? I don't want to give everything away from the book, but I mean, that seems... No, no. It's just reading the Bible, so you're not... If we've read the Bible, it's not a spoiler alert. For sure. No, I think so. I think that if we read scripture out of context, we would definitely miss the point or hyper-emphasize one thing over the other. And it's always good work to be like, this is what I think this means at this point. Can I backtrack a little bit? And I think my book also does a good workaround. It's not just moving through, you know, all of the Ephesians context where Apostle Paul's main emphasis was on because Christ has done this, therefore we are people who are marked by mutually submitting to one another. That is a given for all Christian faith communities. And then these are aspects nitty-gritty on what it would look like. My emphasis is on what does leadership look like, given the context of because Christ has done this, therefore mutual submission exists in a Christian community. What's the role of the leader? Yeah. One of the things that sort of struck me was as I was reading your book, I'm like, I can envision some leaders that I would probably consider domineering reading what you're writing and saying, oh, cool, I'm doing this. And so I'm wondering, you know, just talk a little bit about when you think about a picture of leadership, when you're talking about shared power, when you're talking about this sort of shared leadership context, what does that actually look like? Give people a little bit of a picture of what it might look like. Yeah, that probably is the biggest question I'm trying to answer in the book, because if leadership isn't defined, then it becomes really, really vague or people just assume that they're doing it well, just because they're in a position to do so. A lot of, I think, the work around shared leadership or even polycentric leadership nowadays, the church is not borrowing from. I wouldn't say that. But the best field that's probably doing it is in medicine, education and the business world is now coming onto it. So if you kind of think about like something familiar like Netflix, just recently in the past five years, turned, which most of the time in CEO world, they would never think to really think that this would work, but they're doing a definitive co-leadership, co-CEO model. So the business world is looking at the profitability of this company and looking towards it. So I think that the business world is catching up to what medicine is doing and education is doing. I'm biased. I'm co-vocational. I'm a physician. So, you know, I have one one toe in the medical field. But if you kind of think about like what was a decentralized platform that allowed everyone's leadership and expertise and contribution and decision making make sense? The most recent example is from the pandemic, medical field and education field from the very get go in 2020 needed for this an open source, decentralized learning products that everyone has a clear vision in mind. The clarity of thought and goal was that we need to figure out a solution to this thing that is impacting the entire globe. So everyone contributes and everyone's going to win. The whole thing, high tides raise all ships. Right. If you kind of think through that, I'm thinking through who if that is the most beautiful model of highest level of contribution, people have the humility to be able to work in collaboration. If all of that I'm like that probably is not invented by human beings. Right. It probably is invented by God. Right. So if you're if you think of any aspects where there is humility involved and collaborative work where people are trying to achieve a similar goal that benefits all of humanity. To me, that has to come from God, not from a human force. And so if you kind of look at scripture, then you see so much more evidence of how Christian leadership, church leadership started out in collaboration. There's a clarity in goal. They want the kingdom of God to be the way that every single person all across the globe are going to be experiencing how to live as truly human ones because of their devotion and love for God. If that's the case, there's a clarity and vision. How do then church communities and leadership allow for that kind of environment to flourish? So that's one piece of it. Yeah. I think one way to think about shared leadership is really in that word collaboration. Where are there centers of influence that different kinds and different subsets of leaders can contribute for the flourishing of the entire community? When I say community, not just the church, but the community or neighborhood that church resides in. It's the leadership set that's kind of thinking about all of those things and having that in mind at the same time. And I don't think one person can do it on their own. Yeah. So much of what I was reading in this book made sense having read your previous book, right? Because that book really talks about discipleship as the center of the church. And so you have this almost animating principle that is driving people toward just discipleship. And to the extent that you can get people to buy into that shared vision, this is the task we're trying to complete, now shared leadership seems like it would be at least possible. You know, obviously, if you have people sort of following their own aims and trying to do their own thing or even chasing money or whatever, you know,

There are, it's not that there wouldn't be any difficult decisions ever, but those other things tend to be more divisive. I mean, when we're, when we're pursuing discipleship, we're all trying to sit under the authority of Christ, and so we can adjudicate that in a different manner. But it, I think this mode of leadership made much more sense. Um, at least I, I made more sense to me and it, it felt, um, that's not what I mean to say, it felt in concert with your previous work. That's the better way to put it. It felt in concert with it. Like, it felt like it's flowing out of what you wrote in your previous work. Did you have any of that in mind when you were thinking through leadership at all? Yeah, it probably was the, the most common question posed to me when I was, uh, making more public a centered discipleship, a lot of training or consultation or, or speaking work. A lot of the questions were around like, how, how can you do this? How, how, how does this fit? Like, who, who's in leadership? You know, those kinds of things. And so, um, uh, because this kind of shared leadership model, uh, was a common response to those kinds of questions, uh, it felt very natural to be able to be like, oh yeah, this is actually uh what we do and this is, this is, uh, uh, how uh discipleship can be centered, uh, in a growing community, uh, because our leadership is shared. Okay. And do you think, you know, you work co-vocationally, right, and this is somebody I asked before the interview, so, um, you also live in Hawaii. And I think those two factors are kind of, they're really interesting for you to come at this sort of idea of shared leadership. Number one, the co-vocational aspect generally means that you're not, um, your concern for the church community is not necessarily motivated by a necessity to make it work to live, right? There's not that, uh, you may have some economics in there and I'm not asking you to get in your business, but usually when people are doing like a co-vocational thing, they have this other job that's sort of providing for their living and then they do um church, not on the side, but they use that as sort of a tent making approach to do this. And then the Hawaiian context, which I, I just think, you know, it's one of the only places I've ever been to that is, I mean, it's truly an island, and it has its own very isolated culture based on geography. When you come over to the actual mainland of the United States, the separations, yes, we have, you know, different, you know, red state, blue state kind of stuff going on, right? But it does feel a little more connected. It feels a little bit more, um, it feels a little bit tighter how you can do things, how you can set things up, those kind of things. And so I'm wondering how do you think about first shared leadership from a Hawaiian context? Do you feel like that Hawaiian context is, is particularly conducive for you to come up with this sort of a theory and think about leadership in this way? And then maybe also speak to the co-vocational aspect. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. And dear listener and watcher, I did not answer this question when James asked me previously, so he is listening to it at the same time as you are. Yeah, I think that that is probably a common misnomer around it. I think that, um, I think that I could have written both Center Discipleship and You Were Never Meant to Lead Alone from my uh from the city that I moved uh to uh Hawaii from, which is Philadelphia. So, yeah, and I think it speaks to a lot of the work around shared leadership that I do now, both in the U.S. and the U.K., a lot of um larger or older denominations uh uh in the U.K. like I'm reading churches, uh, you know, who've been centuries, centuries old, right? They are, they are asking for uh for work and help and assistance around shared leadership, how to structure that into their existing churches. Um I think also, probably it is probably a more reality that, and not to be offensive in any way, but uh the, the reality is that I think that we think of um uh the, the, the poster child for what leadership looks like in the church in uh mega church settings, they are usually predominantly white, male, evangelical-led. There is nothing wrong with a white male evangelical uh leader. I am married to a white guy. Love him to pieces. He's my favorite white person, you know. Uh but, but I think that there is an offering that the white male dominated evangelical uh church setting has made. If you kind of peek under, under the hood a little bit, uh even on mainland or continental U.S., you would see a lot of churches that are trying to do a shared leadership model, but they're probably not white male uh led. A lot of the Latino, Latina churches, uh black-led churches, a lot of the Asian American churches, they're struggling and wrestling through this because they are coming from, um, an immigrant story for, for some of them. Others are coming from oppression. So really, again, it's trying to think through. I think shared leadership, without a shadow of a doubt, is really trying to name, how do we uh use or abuse power? So if you already have a culture of people who are going to be struggling and wrestling with power uh dynamics, then most of the time, these are uh the communities that are probably sharing power more readily than uh churches that have historically, especially here in the U.S., been uh had privilege of power. So I think that when we are talking about shared leadership, Really, the first thing we should be talking about, why isn't it happening? Well, it's probably not happening as visibly as we think, not because there's a problem with shared leadership. It probably is because human beings have a problem with power. Okay, talk a little bit about that, that power aspect then, because, you know, I'm familiar with like, most of my sociological reading has been in Pierre Bourdieu and um fields of power and habitus and capital and all those kind of fun things. And so when I think power, that's sort of what I'm thinking. It's this um mode that we exercise within a certain field of play to, you know, sort of quote unquote, win the game, right? How are you thinking of power? What is that? Yeah, yeah, I think that that's a great question. I think probably one of the best contributors around uh sociological power dynamics is Iris Marion Young. Uh she wrote a watershed book. Um no one really took it up because it was like in the 90s and everyone was like, what are you talking about, lady? Um but, but uh she actually is able to define all the different uh types around power. I'm not going to go into that because we're gonna go into sociology, but I think when you're just kind of thinking through the church and specific church setting, you can think about power in terms of authority. There's probably three different types of authority that exist in the church. Every church can look at their community like, oh yeah, these things exist. We give over power or control or some sort of uh influence ability to people who are in leadership or decision-making positions. So it's like a decision-making or a leadership authority, a spiritual authority. It's like the people who are like, oh my gosh, you know, they know the Bible really well or they just feel like holier than me kinds of people in the church. You get, we give over some sort of power to them, and those who have people power, relational authority. People are well connected. And so if there was three, like you think about like, if you have to have a new initiative in your church, who are you going to ask? You're not gonna ask like the staff member. You're probably not gonna maybe ask the person who like uh is the most well-read uh in scripture. It's the person who's the most connected. It's the person who, like with one text, uh uh 50 people uh show up to a thing, right? So there's a, there's a, there's different kinds of uh power uh dynamics in play, I think in the church, those uh uh three categories. I think another way to think about uh power in the church is um how, and again, it's not to be offensive, but, but many of us have experienced a church shopping. How do we do church shopping? We kind of do it through program, uh the, the feel or vibe of things, but uh essentially, people probably uh church shop or land in

make me feel smart. And that's important to me. And that's why I want to attend. Or the main leader has a high, high level of shepherding gift. They care for me. I feel healed. I feel safe. And that's why I attend. I think that if leadership is only stuck with somebody who needs to hold up the full helm of being responsible for making a congregation feel cool, clever, or cared for, I think that that is an impossible position to be sustained. And so I think that there are different kinds of power dynamics at play in the church. A note about co-vocational leadership. I think that this is probably the shift that the American church is going to face now, I think, expedited post-pandemic. I think that if you kind of look at statistics around church planting now, there are far less denomination-affiliated church planters, and nor are they young. It used to be church planters are 20s and 30s. The average age of a church planter now is a white male in their mid-40s. Church planting, starting a brand new church. And most of these church planters are usually coming from a non-denominational or disaffiliated organization. And they are co-vocational because the church or denomination or whatever sending organization is telling them, we can't pay for your entire income or salary, therefore you need to get another job in addition. So a lot of the co-vocational, I think, planting movements are really trying to send out people as if they're missionaries, but staying within their own country of origin or residence. So I think that the shift is already happening, and it's not something that's unique to just Hawaii. So one of the phenomena that sort of raises a question from that phenomenon, because, and again, just trying to get a picture of the shared leadership idea, I have a couple questions. So I'll start with one. When we think about authority, I'm wondering, how do you deal with, authority makes sense to me, the way you describe power and authority there makes perfect sense to me. There are going to be those people who have these different types of influence within the congregation, and to the extent that they can work together, you're probably going to get a better result than not. Right? Makes perfect sense. How do you handle then responsibility within the congregation? Like accountability, responsibility within the congregation? You know, so an individual sometimes feels like, hey, I'm responsible for X. And so I, you know, I don't share that responsibility with anyone. Right? I'll be held accountable for this, whatever it is. How do you deal with that within a shared leadership concept? Yeah, I think that it probably goes down into the weeds a little bit more, but there has to be frameworks and structures in place for that to actually happen. This is when a collaborative leadership or nimble leadership comes into place where there are centers of influence and they have a nimble tie to one another. So the accountability is they have a shared vision or shared set of goals. The different centers of influence are responsible for doing X, Y, Z, whether it's tasks or care, given the church a setting. And then you have a cycle of either feedback or assessment. How did we do? How did we do? What sort of, what were we weak on? Right? Those kinds of structures and frameworks put into place probably will make sure leadership much more sustainable than I think most of the time leadership runs out from reaction. Trying to maintain status quo. Don't change anything. If nothing is broke, but if things are breaking, you don't want to talk about it. You just want to avoid it until it's broken. And then you react, right? Like a lot of some of the, some of the organizations or more national organizations who are trying to shift to senior level, executive level shared leadership model. Those are the questions that they, that we wrestle together with. A lot of the work that I'm doing with them is really around, is there a clarity on your roles and responsibilities? Do you have enough clarity that this person can take it on? And do you have a system of feedback and assessment that's regular, that's predictable, that's inevitable, that everyone's prepared for, where it's not going to place people into shame game, where it's not going to place people into a performance, a run a kind of organization. Right. But those kinds of frameworks and structures put into place are intentional and it is probably assuming that some sort of conflict and some sort of accountability needs to exist. Right. And so you just put that at the lead time and not the reaction live time. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So my second question sort of rose out of that was the co-vocational aspect. I agree with you. I think we're going to see a lot more co-vocational folks. One of the models that, that has been popping up lately in a co-vocational model is you have a, what's called a centralized teaching pastor, someone who preaches every sermon. And then it's telecast to all the other groups. And then you have like a, maybe a campus pastor or something like that, who's truly co-vocational. And he is there. She is there to care for and shepherd and then keep that, you know, little group of people together. Right. To do the work of what we might consider the pastoring, the actual pastoring work, as opposed to the preaching work. If we can make that distinction. Do you see, obviously I see some potential problems with that model because you've still got sort of the superstar notion and that can be real problematic, but it seems to me that that has at least some of the elements of the shared leadership that you're talking about. Am I right or wrong about that? I think that that's a really great starting point because I appreciate it when churches, and those kinds of churches actually do exist in Hawaii where there's a main campus in California and then they do a satellite campus plant here in Hawaii. And I would just say that no offense to anyone doing that model, but that does not work here in Hawaii. Most of the church plants that have started that way, it doesn't last long. And I think it's because, again, I appreciate that people are trying to think differently around it. They're trying to do a close knit, but value a local place. Like I love that. I love that that kind of model also releases leaders. It elevates a shepherd, a wired pastor. It's like, I love all of that. I do think the limitations are if we don't remember that the two key aspects of why a Christian community should work, like why Jesus invested so much, not into any sort of gimmick or technology, like he just invested in his disciples. Right. If why and how I think God's intent for a Christian community to work is it needs to be rooted to a local place, but their witness of the risen Christ has to be witnessed and displayed in a local place that it makes sense to a local set of people. Right. That's one. And number two, it's banking on the fact that the leadership or the gift of the witness of the church is happening not through their leaders. It's happening through the congregation. Right. And so it is a, I think it's a mind shift on how leaders think about their roles. You know, in my book, I spend a lot of time around if you're a teacher wired or teacher gifted and all those things, your maturity of leadership doesn't bank on the fact that you can communicate publicly well. It just means that you're an excellent communicator, which is awesome, which is also, so great to have. Right. But your maturity and your leadership is, are you the person who makes sure that there is a facilitated environment constantly that the people of God love to learn from one another. That is a very different teaching setting than a person coming in and being a teaching pastor a weekend and week out. Right. And also the people who are looking for other teacher wired gifted people in the room. Right. That's one of the things that that's worked really well within our own communities because we do additional community model. We grow smaller pods of groups all over Oahu. If that's happening and we need local leaders, that's the biggest emphasis. If your leadership set does not look like the neighborhood your church resides in, you need to rethink who's in leadership because you have to really assess who's holding power within that community. Right. Again, if we're talking about leadership, we're talking about power dynamics. Right. And so I am from West Philadelphia. I don't sound like people in Hawaii. So I, even though I may be the best communicator or best teacher or have the best biblical background, I can't be the only person teaching. I need local leaders. And so sharing leadership model actually makes it so that mature leaders not only facilitate an environment so that all the gifts of whatever that work is, is equipping all of the congregation and inviting the community into it. And there are the people who are constantly identifying who else has this gift that we can share, share this, this equipping with. It's Andrew. I mean, what you're saying, it reminds me of, I think it's Ron Heifetz work leadership above the line. Maybe I can't remember the name of it, but anyway, he talks about the role of the leader being less about solving the problem and more about getting everyone to agree.

there is a problem and what that problem actually is, and then mobilizing them toward fixing that problem. And it just strikes me that what you're describing is akin to that, not exactly like that, but certainly in that vein, that the leader is not the end-all, be-all solution. He's not the one, she's not the one who's going to keep the whole church going no matter what. It's this sort of facilitative role that gets the whole congregation motivated and mobilized to do the work of the Lord in that local space, which I think is great. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. That's why we circle back to Ephesians 4, right? If you're looking for what definition that the Apostle Paul writes down, like Christ appointed these five archetypes or types of leaders, I think it really is, and I write to prove the point that it really is around what kinds of environments of equipping do these five types of leaders, a leadership set provides. But the whole point is, you know if it's working or not because it's a congregation being equipped to do the works of God for the benefit of the community around them. It's not, do the leadership set do the works of God on behalf of the congregation or on behalf of the flourishing of the congregation. I think that the contemporary church thinks that's the job, that that's the work. I get paid and I'm in this position so that I do the works of God for the benefit of my church, for the flourishing of my church so my church attendance grows or our budget grows or whatever. And they're beautiful things. Like we need money. We need people power. We need resources. All those things are in need, right? But again, it's a leadership mindset shift to think that actually my role in this leadership is not to do the works of service. It's so that the entire congregation is equipped to do the works of service of God. And the hallmark of if that's happening or not is not if the church benefits. It's if the community that the church resides in is also flourishing with the church. It was fascinating. I had a friend who was involved with some of the mainline denominations back in the 80s and 70s and, you know, he sent me some of the assessments that they would give on an annual basis or quarterly basis, whatever they did, to the mainline denomination pastors. And they were supposed to assess how their church was going. And it had nothing to do with the total number of baptisms you were getting and those kind of things. I don't even think they were on there. They were more like, are you seeing your people reach out into their community and love their neighbor? It was those kind of like qualitative questions that they were asking pastors to reflect on to help them understand how successful their particular local congregation was being. And it just strikes me. I mean, when I read those sheets that he gave me, I was like, wow, this is fantastic stuff. Like, we should be doing this now. And it strikes me that as you're talking, that is largely what you're trying to, that is at least part of what you're trying to convey here, is that the effectiveness of the leader has less to do with total growth, numeric growth, we might say, within a congregation, and far more to do with how that growth actually happens, whether it's spiritual depth or numeric growth. It's how that growth happens, not that it happens per se. Is that a fair distinction? Yeah. Yeah, I think probably a leadership, and again, it sounds cheeky that I'm going to tether both of my books, you know, but I think that, yeah, I think discipleship, if your congregation has more disciples who are living out imitating Jesus, and you have qualitative and quantitative markers that tell you that that is happening, you're probably doing something right. It means that your leadership and the shared leadership is focused on, are the people of God being equipped to imitate Jesus? If you're imitating Jesus, you're going to be on mission. If you're imitating Jesus, you're going to really think about your character and how it impacts other people around you. If you're imitating Jesus, whatever room you're going into, it should feel a little bit more like everybody in that room is experiencing the kingdom of God. That's what imitating Jesus is, right? And so I'm not expecting the leaders to do all of that all the time, but the leaders should expect that as the success of my church grows or whatever, I can only say that it is successful if the congregation is being discipled and not just learning something cool or new or being cared for. It's the congregation actually imitating Jesus more and more and more. Yeah, because it's fascinating, I think, and this is probably a false dichotomy, but I think it'll be a decent enough example, so I'll throw it out there. But if we look at the growth of the early church in Acts, like we're enamored with how fast it grows and the numeric growth and all the wonderful things that they're doing and the spread of the gospel. But then if you look at the embattled church in Revelation, what you realize is that sometimes growth isn't possible and that what you're really trying to do is just hold back the waters of the flood without losing your form. And I think that what you're talking about there is the sort of leadership that allows Christians to be faithful in both environments and the fruits of that faithfulness are different in both. One produces this sort of numeric growth and new believers coming in and a love for neighbor and all of those different things. The other is just sheer resilience and survival and conviction and lack of compromise. Those aren't two different types of leadership. They're a singular type of leadership that is forming people into the image of Christ. Absolutely. And I think that's the Apostle Paul's point every time that he's, I mean, even in Ephesians 4, in the book, I take the time to go through other epistles on purpose because you want to have like, you know, hyperlinks or shortcuts to know what, why does the Apostle Paul use the word that he, and the term that he uses, right? Because to, you know, first century Christians immediately when he says like a word that references body or references a temple, they're thinking of something else, right? Just like we should be. And so I think that the church is meant to be, the church in Acts and the church in Revelation, you're kind of thinking about, they both are witnesses to the living Christ, you know, and depending on the circumstance, it's what either draws people or repels people, but at the end of the day, you're trying to say that a community of Christ imitators are going to make sure that people need to respond to Jesus in one form or another, whether it's to resist, right, or to be compelled, right? Because a caring for one another and caring for the poor, caring for the community around that, is that attractive to people, right? And it wasn't just teaching, right? That's the whole point about the Acts story is it wasn't just the teaching that, you know, Peter's amazing one sermon that he did and 3,000 people, like that wasn't it. Luke didn't write the book that way, right? So you're trying to think through what was at the compelling central key piece around it. The body of Christ is meant to be either a resistance to empire, current evidences of empire today, like you see in a future church in Revelation, right? But it's also supposed to be a center of care where all are invited, all are welcome. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. There's no leftovers. There's no ostracized in the kingdom of God, right? That could be really, really repelling for people or it could be something where like, oh my gosh, this is the kind of community I've longed for all my life, right? But if the church isn't equipped to be that kind of community, if they're not equipped to imitate Jesus, not personally, but communally, together collectively, then there isn't any chance at being a source of resistance or a source of care. Yeah, they're both lacking there. We could go a million different ways with this, but I know we're kind of running short on time, and so I'll get this sort of last question in. If you had to think of just a couple of things that you would suggest to churches to sort of start thinking about shared leadership, how do you, how do you even start to take steps toward what would be a very radical shift, I think, for a lot of churches and congregations? How would you counsel them? Yeah, I will always say, just like I do for Center Discipleship stuff, don't change anything! Don't change anything now and don't blame the people!

that God has given you to lead and love now, please don't do those kinds of things, right? The first take is like do a good assessment. You can do it if you're a senior pastor, do it for yourself, but do it honestly. Because you know what? The thing about being a senior pastor, and I have been there, done that, the buck does stop with you. And most of the time I start with, no matter what has happened, this is still my fault. You know what I mean? Like that is a very humble approach to leadership, right? But I say the first step is just take a humble assessment of where things are at. You can ask questions like, do we actually have disciples within our congregation? And how do I know that? That's one piece. And the next thing is like, oh, if I don't have that many, what do they need to be equipped in? And if you're only thinking that you're equipped in through a worship service, then you're probably not sharing leadership. So you kind of have to start thinking through, oh my goodness, how do the congregation become more missional? How do they care and know their neighbors more? Are they equipped in knowing how to share the gospel? Do they even know what the gospel is, right? I think a starting point is the name of the question around, is my congregation discipled? Most of the time it's no, if you're really being honest. What are the, where are there equipping gaps? And then who can I bring on board to share this equipping with me? You know, most of that book is really trying to, you know, the last portion of it is becoming very, very practical around how to do structuring, identifying leaders, you know, those kinds of things. But if you have a starting point, it really is, can you do an honest assessment around discipleship within your church? What I found that that part of the book really interesting because I think that it, what it helped me think past was structure. So like I'm not led a church. I've never been a pastor, but I've been in plenty of churches and sort of helped in those contexts. And often what I hear from the pastors that I've worked with is, well, we have small groups. And, and it's like, well, but that's sort of the program or the structure, but you still have to ask the further question, are they working? You know, and some of them, I remember one articulated the idea that he was just so frustrated that people weren't growing. You know, they weren't being discipled. And yet he had this small group thing. And so his solution was, well, we need something in addition to small groups. And I'm like, well, that's a lot of work, man. Like, you know, and so it, it just takes, I think your approach in those last few chapters, I think frames the questions out in such a way that you wouldn't necessarily leap to, Oh, okay. I got to start a discipleship program now, or, Oh yeah, I got to, I got to pull in three more leaders and give them titles. Right? Like none of that happens. It's just sort of like a, a calmer, more deliberate approach to thinking about where the gaps are and then maybe how to fill them. Yeah, I will. I will say that the uniqueness in Hawaii is that for whatever reason and probably because it does have a history, a recent history of colonization, right. And oppression. And so there is a suspicion against Christianity, but there is this weird thing where it, it's saturated with a lot of church leaders, planters, senior leaders from outside the community. And there are so much fewer local leaders, right? And when I was doing, before I started my second church plan, I'm thinking through this. This is like, you know, eight years ago now. And I'm thinking through why is that? Oh, it's because there hasn't ever been a recognition of permission giving that local leaders can lead, but you know what? People probably lead differently than you. You know, when we're doing the senior pastor, when we're doing that humble assessment work of kind of thinking through, is this working, whatever. And then get to the point around how do, who do I need to share leadership with? If your criteria for leadership is not reassessed under are they first an imitator of Jesus? Because man, you're putting them into a position where they're going to start modeling things, right? If they have, you know, that is really, really important. Are they people who actually are humble? They're hopeful people. If you don't have that kind of criteria set, you're just going to constantly reproduce that person, right? Because the leadership has a lot of influence, right? And then the third thing to kind of consider is, are they going to bring in something that you don't have? You know what I mean? Are there a gap that you can honestly say that I have a gap in this and that's why I rely on this person and we share this work together. Why I don't, I don't think that a past model and tools are the best and only tool to use, but I do think that again, because it is scripturally based, I think that the apostle Paul offers something around the kinds of leaders that it helps us get categories around. I may not be a hundred percent gifted in shepherd. I'm not wired shepherd. FYI listeners viewers, I'm just not, I'm not. I'm apostolic. I love to start new things, new initiatives, take new territory, all those kinds of stuff. I love multiplying and sending. But if I'm the only kind of leader doing that all the time, I would never survive in Hawaii because it feels so, so brash. If it was just me leading, it would not work in Hawaii. But if it's just me leading, it probably wouldn't also work in Philadelphia. It would not be sustainable. This kind of work because people need healing and care. People need to experience welcome. People need to experience a love and missional impulse for, for freedom and liberation. People need to know that they can also have full access to the word of God for themselves and not rely on some other higher level leader to provide it right. You need all of these things so that there's an invitation for flourishing for both the church and the community. Yeah, no, it's fascinating to think through. I, I really appreciated the book. I think it was sort of a breath of fresh air. I mean, I, I haven't done leadership stuff in a while since I left higher ed. I haven't really thought too much about leadership, although I do teach a class on leadership. So I guess maybe I should think about a little bit more, but, but no, I really did appreciate the book. And I think you're right. I think there's something to the shared leadership conversation that needs to start happening, at least in churches. They need to start sort of thinking and assessing and trying to understand what it, why is it that we're hamstringing the body of Christ by just having an apostle in charge or just having a teacher in charge or just having a, you know, whatever have you. And how can we really pull together a fuller body of people who are capable then of shaping disciples for Jesus Christ? Well said. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I really appreciate you being back on the show. This was great. And like I said, I love the book, so I would totally recommend it to all the listeners. The title again is You Were Never Meant to Lead Alone by MK Strasser. There'll be a link to the book on IVP's website in the show description. They give us a 20% discount. And so I would encourage you to go there, get the book for 20% off. Order it from IVP's website. There's great folks over there and this has just been a pleasure talking to you, Eun. So I really appreciate it. Thank you for being here. Likewise, James. Thanks so much. All right, everybody, take care and we'll see you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. A powerful prayer life does not require hiking a mountain to be able to hear from God. God can meet us right in the middle of our busy lives to help, guide, and speak to us through prayer. I'm Christina Patterson, host of the Teach Us to Pray podcast, providing practical teaching and encouragement on how you can make prayer a natural and consistent part of your everyday life. I promise it won't require hiking a mountain, but you just might develop the faith to move one. Listen and subscribe at lifeaudio.com.